Fast Company Our brains are hardwired to hear stories, rather than hard facts. BY ANETT GRANTJanuary 15, 2019

These are the 3 components of a great story. What’s this have to do with Bette Midler?

I was recently coaching a C-suite executive from a multi-billion-dollar company. He started telling me about his background and told me he was from Mumbai. Having spent time in Mumbai, I asked: “where in Mumbai?”

“From the slums of Mumbai,” he answered, “My mother had me when she was 16. She made me study–in the middle of relentless chaos–she made me study.”

His answer immediately stood out to me for two reasons. One, his mother made a huge difference in his life. Two, in just a few sentences, he encapsulated the elements of telling a great story.Read More

Showbiz 411
Bette Midler on Carol Channing: “I flat out adored her…as far as I am concerned, she will live forever”
By Roger Friedman
January 15, 2019

Bette Midler, the most recent Dolly Levi, has sent out a statement about the original Dolly. Carol Channing, who passed away today at age 97. Carol, by the way, was famed for not missing a performance in the four years she starred in “Hello, Dolly!” from 1964 to 1968.

Bette Midler On Carol Channing

“There was only one Carol Channing, and there will never be another. She was that rarest of stage creatures, an absolute original. From her instantly recognizable voice to her stature, which was close to 6 feet, with her wide-eyed take on the world she crept into theater-goers hearts and took up permanent residence there.

When Scott Rudin invited me to play Dolly in 2016, I immediately thought of her and went to visit. How could I not? She had played the part over 7,000 times around the world, and to the world, she WAS Dolly. It was one of the great afternoons of my life. She was gracious, and she was generous, sharing with me the legends, the lore and the mechanics of Dolly, much of which had been lost in time. I will forever be grateful to her for lighting my way to one of the most magical experiences of my performing life, and for the hours I spent in her company. I flat-out adored her and send her fans, her friends and her son, Channing Lowe, my condolences, although as far as I am concerned, she will live forever.

Mister D:Now I am just going by memory here, and from what I remember, Bob Dylan did ask Bette Midler to join this historic tour which included a myriad of iconic singer-songwriter artists. However, Bette just felt like she didn’t fit in on this kind of tour. And if you think about it, she did have a point. Of course she could have dropped the glitz and glamour for denim, and could have altered her act with some tailor made songs, but it’s hard to know if fans of Dylan and his fellow artists would have accepted her. So she declined. In this article, it says she did show up for one of the gigs, but I never read anything about her performing.

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese is known for directing classic films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas, but he also enjoys helming a fascinating documentary such as The Last Waltz, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, and No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.Read More

“The Rose” was first recorded by Bette Midler for the soundtrack of the 1979 film The Rose in which it plays under the closing credits. However the song was not written for the movie: Amanda McBroom recalls, “I wrote it in 1977 [or] 1978, and I sang it occasionally in clubs. … Jim Nabors had a local talk show, and I sang [“The Rose”] on his show once.”[1] According to McBroom she wrote “The Rose” in response to her manager’s suggestion that she write “some Bob Seger-type tunes” to expedite a record deal: McBroom obliged by writing “The Rose” in forty-five minutes. Said McBroom: “‘The Rose’ is … just one verse [musically] repeated three times. When I finished it, I realized it doesn’t have a bridge or a hook, but I couldn’t think of anything to [add].”Read More